The Party's Over...

...for me, at least.  

(And I know it's been a while since my last post - sorry 'bout that.  I haven't fallen off of the cliff yet.)

I've been following the Clinton-Sanders primary battle over the last several months with great interest - perhaps more than is good for my health, at least from a blood-pressure standpoint.    To this, I have the following observations:



--> Thom Hartmann, on his radio program, states his belief that the way to cure the Democratic Party of it's addiction to corporate cash and corrupt practices is for progressives to "take that sucker over".   Considering how the Sanders Campaign has been treated by the DNC and it's handmaidens in the MSM (election fraud, innuendo, voter suppression, etc), we're seeing demonstrated what a fool's errand that truly is.   The Democratic Party, judging by the behaviors of the Clinton Machine and the aforementioned, is an owned and operated device of those same paymasters - and if noting else, the Sanders Campaign is laying that fact bare for all to see.  

--> The New York primary is up next.    Hometown hero Bernie against carpetbagging former Senator Hillary.   I'm a Bernie-or-Buster (actually, Jill Stein is my plan B), but even I have to admit that New York will likely be a tough haul for Bernie.   The reason: Wall Street.  Many of the bigwigs on said street have openly said that they would rather vote for Hillary than any of the Republicans, and want absolutely NOTHING to do with Bernie or his confrontational-to-money stance.   What does that tell you?

This is not to say he doesn't have a chance.   The polls have largely been trending in his direction over the last several weeks and he does have that long win streak.    He'll need 56% of the remaining pledged delegates to secure the number required for the nomination, without the superdelegates.   A tall order, but not impossible.   If Hillary has to rely on superdelegates to secure the nomination, then this, along with the other brouhaha's occurring during the primary process, will serve to help nullify the sense of legitimacy her "nomination" will have.    

--> We're getting increasing noises from the Hillary camp, that even though Bernie has just won 8 of the last 9 caucuses/primaries, that he has no real way to win the nomination.   This point was even made, apparently, in her congratulatory message regarding Wyoming.   Besides the classlessness of such a gesture, her numbers are based on what was described as "fuzzy math" and the assumed loyalty of the party-insider superdelegates, whose figures are being calculated along with the pledged delegates by many of the MSM outlets.  

--> In order to run as a Democrat, Bernie Sanders had to pledge to the party that he would support the party's nominee.  He repeated this pledge recently, in the dust cloud formed about the trumped-up non-story that he called Clinton "unqualified".  (He was actually defending himself from one of Clinton's trademark "sideswipes" regarding his qualifications for the office.)  I won't hold it against him personally if he doesn't win the nomination and supports Hillary for the general, even though I would prefer that he run as an independent.   The fact that he's in the Senate as an independent and able to get anything done at all is largely because of his relationships with key Democrats, and without those relationships, he would have been out of office a long time ago.   

--> What does all of this mean to me?   I left the Democratic Party around the year 2000, in part because of the disgust I had with the Clinton Machine, and because of my issues with Al Gore (his corporatism and his wife's involvement with the PMRC were the deciding factors at the time).   The events of the last several months have demonstrated that the Democratic Party is politically and ethically DEAD.   It's a shell of what it was, and hasn't done anything for working people since at least the Reagan era, if not before.   "Taking that sucker over" is a fool's errand, as I've stated above, because it is now nothing more than a political "brand", having been rendered as such by the corporate and bank donors who fund the campaigns.    Besides, if we did "take that sucker over", what would happen to that wonderful infrastructure the party created, largely through corporate and bank dollars?   That's right, it will disappear.    Then what do you have left?

We need a new, viable third party, devoted to the causes of working people and those less fortunate.   If it's said that the Republicans deal with the 1%, and the Dems deal with the to 10%, then who is looking out for everybody else?  No one.   Could it be the Greens?  Perhaps - they have a Presidential candidate running (Jill Stein).   Could it be a new Democratic Socialist party, based on the platform Bernie Sanders is running on?  Maybe.   But we need an alternative to the corpse of the Democratic Party.